Hi I’m a senior and I’ve been trying to decide on a major for college (I realize you can change it, but it’s something for me to work towards). I took anatomy and loved it and I’m enjoying psychology right now. At first I thought I should be a speech pathologist because I have a speech impediment myself making it relatable and I’ve been in therapy all my life. All I really know is that I want to help people, and besides the one section in anatomy where we had chemistry, I’m so far not the biggest fan but think I’ll take a class over the summer at community college. Any advice or types on what major should take? I mainly want to help people, but I’m not the biggest fan of competition
I really think that if you don’t know what you want to major in, you should just go in undeclared and decide later. It doesn’t really matter to “give you something to work towards” if you end up changing that a year from now. (Not that there’s anything wrong with changing your major - but why pick something more or less randomly when you can wait?)
Wanting to help people is a super broad desire that could be done with any major.
Your sentence is a little bit confusing. Are you saying you like Anatomy or Chemistry? Or both?
You could look into Cognitive Science, it has some psychology but draws from linguistics, anthropology, philosopy, making it a bit more of an interesting (and unique) degree imo.
Are you interested in med school?
As a psychology major myself, I can tell you that you WILL have to take science classes if you want major in psych. I would listen to Juillet and just go into college with an undeclared major and maybe get a better idea of what subjects are merely “interesting” and which ones you’re passionate about. Like she said, almost any major can lead to a career where you can help people.
That, and most colleges have some sort of general education requirement. That would either be prescribed series of classes for everyone, or some form of “x amount of classes in area a, y amount of classes in area b…”. Even if you start out college just taking classes towards general education, you’re still working towards something. And taking classes in a given subject at the college level is possibly the best way to determine what your true interests are as far as majors go.
So, I second (third?) the advice to go in undecided and decide later. Use your first year (or two!) to take a wide range of classes that sound interesting and fulfill general education requirements. That will help you narrow down majors, and from there you can take additional classes in the “short list” of subjects to determine your final major.
You could look into social work and psychology or sociology. You definitley have time to work on general education courses before settling for what you want, especially since (in my school at least) some majors will have classes that require an advanced English course as a prerequisite (which is covered by the gen. education).
Since it seems like the social sciences are what you’re interested, it might be worthwhile to seek out a more leadership based role on campus as well. You could look into being a Resident Assistant/Advisor.